Testing notes

Most of the teams are sticking with the same drivers they used yesterday, apart from the two exceptions mentioned above.

Nico Rosberg will get a full day in the Mercedes W01, with Michael Schumacher set to take over from him on Wednesday. The younger of the two Mercedes drivers has asked for some changes to be made to his seat to make him more comfortable in the car.

Surprisingly for the first day of testing, yesterday saw few interruptions and generally good reliability. The major exceptions were Toro Rosso, who had a problem with their gearbox actuator which they were unable to repair fully before the end of the session and were planning to work on overnight.

As well as getting our first look at three new cars yesterday, several teams had new parts on their cars. You can see pictures of those cars in yesterday’s post.

Testing so far

The charts below show how much testing each driver, car and engine had done before the start of today’s test.

The teams have a maximum testing limit of 15,000km. They’ll struggle to do that much in the 15 days’ testing they have between now and the start of the season, but the allocation also has to cover any extra testing they may need to do during the season if they choose to bring in a driver with no previous experience.

The data below also shows how many laps have been logged by each of the four different engine manufacturers in F1:

Drivers’ test mileages

Drivers' test mileages (click to enlarge)

Car test mileages

F1 car test mileages (click to enlarge)

Engine test mileages

Engine test mileages (click to enlarge)

The track

The teams remain at the Ricardo Tormo road course just outside Valencia in Spain (not the street track which is the venue for the European Grand Prix).

The weather is expected to remain much the same as yesterday – dry with temperatures peaking at around 14C.

Which should be reasonably easy to spot – if a car is suddenly 3-4 seconds slower per lap around Valencia it could well be because it’s at maximum fuel capacity.

What would be great is if we could collect as many different lap times for each car as possible and compile them to get an idea of what stint lengths they did and what their lap times were. Anyone fancy it?

What would be great is if we could collect as many different lap times for each car as possible and compile them to get an idea of what stint lengths they did and what their lap times were. Anyone fancy it?

And from that discern who is really doing the best?

It’s an ambitious roject, but I can’t say as if I’m up for it. Even if I crash at midnight, testing still goes on for a few hours after that.

It will be interesting to see how Kamui Kobayashi compares with his team mate Pedro today.
Also I have to say a warm welcome for the season to come alive & to see so many F1 fans in F1F excited about the new season,hope it continues today.

Athough they technically can use illegal parts, it’s a bit pointless since the purpose of testing is to test. They want to make sure the parts they’ve developed for racing wrk the way they’re supposed to; since they obviously can’t use illegal parts in the races, to include them in testing would be a waste of time.

Not necessarily a waste of time. Teams may occasionally find some value in, for example, running parts from last year that are no longer legal in 2010 on the basis that they are a known quantity and therefore reduce the number of unknown quantities inherent in a new car.

Last year, McLaren ran a 2008-spec rear wing in testing to establish whether their problems with rear end grip were caused by the 2009-spec wing or something else.

There might also be another purpose in running an illegal car in testing – to appeal to potential sponsors. In 2001, Jean Alesi set some stunning times in testing for the financially challenged Prost team – but never quite managed to repeat that form on race weekends…

You get x amount of engines for ‘testing’ which is separate from the allocation2 of ‘race engines’. Same goes for tyres too.

from red bull>
“Due to the limit on tyres available to the teams,” he said. “There’s no point in burning up engine mileage and rubber on an RB5. We’d rather use the tyres for quality testing at the three tests that we have confirmed we’ll run at, starting with the first test in Jerez.”

Another question. On race weekends Bridgestone specifies what tyre compounds will be used. Does the same apply with testing? Does Bridgestone say, “we will be supplying soft and super soft tyres for this test, and hard and medium tyres for the next test”? Or are the teams free to use whatever compound tyres they desire?

My understanding is that the front running teams will settle into a routine of running around 80 kilos of fuel, half full tanks, for their long runs to develop the car. Teams looking for sponsors or otherwise trying to catch the eye will be running around 40 kilos at times, a difference worth around 1.5 seconds per lap. This is something to watch out for over the four test sessions this month.

So,it will be very obvious all round when a time has been set on low fuel and new tyres.

I sure hope that start/finish webcam is working tonight… or tomorrow for most of you… that’ll be a nice addition to translating live timing..

It’ll be interesting with a couple new drivers onboard.. be able to get some comparisons to a point… I hope everyone is over the first day “where going to win!!/omg we’re doomed!!” stage of testing… ya… who am I trying to kid… lol… let’s all relax and enjoy the show… :)

According to Bob Bell, the team was surprised at how good their figures from the wind tunnel tests were. What was a two-year plan to get back on top could be done in as little as twelve months if they play their cards right. I suspect they are running an R29 body with R30 parts to get feedback on how the individual parts perform. If they run a full R30 package, they’ll get data on everything at once. But because they know how the R29 behaves, they can account for the R29 parts and isolate the data on the R30 pieces. It will allow them to get a clearly understanding of how it all works, meaning they can get a head-start on developing aero upgrades. They’ll still need to run a full R30 to see how everything works together, but for now they can get ahead of the curve and start making new pieces of kit. I’ll be very interested to see what they run on the third day, since it will be the first time Vitaly Petrov drives a Formula 1 car.

Aside from all of this, Renault has one major advantage over the comeptition this season: they’re Renault. And by that I mean they’re the Renault factory team. They don’t just make the Renault cars, but the Renault RS27 engine as well, which is being reported as the best engine on the grid in terms of fuel consumption. So because they make the cars and the engine, they can actually build their entire chassis around the RS27 unit. As the other works teams, Ferrari and Mercedes have that advantage, too, but as the RS27 is the most fuel-efficient, Renault can get away with having a smaller fuel tank.

In order to save space, some of the teams have been experimenting with a ‘vertical’ fuel tank, a fuel tank that taller than it is wide or long. This creates its own problems because it means the heavier the car is, the higher its centre of gravity will be. Renault can avoid this problem because they are free to configure their engine and fuel tank however they want. They may have to go with a vertical design, but the effect of a raised centre of gravity won’t be as severe. They will almost certainly have the best lateral stability.

Somehow, they’ve managed to do all of this in what appears to be an R29 body. I can’t say how their fuel tank is configured because only Renault has that information, but if they can package their car with a low centre of gravity, excellent lateral stability and a shorter wheelbase than the competition, the R30 is going to be exceptionally good on tight circuits. If I’m right, look for them to be strong at Monaco, Hungary, Singapore, Korea and possibly Valencia. They will also be very nimble through corners with a rapid change of direction, like the opening corners in Malaysia and China and the infield at Interlagos.

i dont think they are running a r28 body because kubica said yesterday that he has never run that heavy in his life. so that means that the car they are using already has the big fuel tank… i dont think they are going to do two complete different cars in a one month period.

I still find it very strange, that all Renault team members talk about the new car (Kubica refers to understeer, the talk about this car being visually different etc.) while we are suspecting them of running a revised R29 for testing new parts!